Separate Ways – Chapter 5 (Part 2 – END)

And here goes the last part of the-most-elegant-spy-in-the-world minigame!

This post contains the last three areas of Separate Ways:

Krauser battle:

This is basically a touched-up version of room 327 in Leon’s campaign. They added some new geometry for the roofs and that’s it. But yet again, the developers used the lower quality PS2 version assets for the entire area.

So I ported all the work I did for Leon’s area, I improved those new roofs and the final path where the Merchant is waiting, and I added baked shadows here and there.

As you can see I also improved all the water effects as usual. I think the result is quite good, as the original one was quite a visual disappointment.

Saddler battle:

This area is quite an interesting case. It has a different structure compared to Leon’s counterpart area (room 329), which was an unexpected (and tedious to deal with) surprise. It seems the developers made the ramp wider and they removed the control panel next to the capsule. It all was done for playability reasons and I kept those changes, but it was a pain to port over all the improvements I previously made in Leon’s area because of these differences…

And again… all terrible looking PS2 version assets. Just take a look at the comparison shots and you’ll notice the missing objects (mostly cables) and that the entire corner with the desk and the monitors was incredibly simplified. In order to bring back those missing elements I needed to edit some of the collision data so that it now matches the new corner geometry.

Oh! And I restored all the breakable screens all over the area and the windows in the upper cabin.

I also added baked shadows onto all the floors and corrected lights and effects…

Final area:

This final room was quite a standard area to remaster. This is what I did:

New 3D models: All the scaffolding bars have been recreated. The mini “islands” in the water surrounding the area have been touched up. Hundreds of small details have been edited in a lot of ways. And new baked shadow textures have been placed onto all floor surfaces.

New lighting: The original light reaching Ada and the enemies was… well… ridiculously bright. I made it look more natural and adaptive to their location. In brief: If they are in a shadowed area they will look darker. If they are in the upper levels they will look lighter. And the light now comes from a coherent direction all the time. (In the original it looked like Ada had a flashlight lighting her back no matter her position…)

New effects: The bloom effects in this area looked especially bad. They are broken in the entire game, but this time it was terribly noticeable… I replaced them all and now they don’t appear and disappear when you are in front of them and move the camera to the right and left. It was really distracting… And again, the water has been fully recreated. In the original it looked like a mixture of sand and blue lava! :/ And now it moves in accordance with the wind direction ;P

New textures: Only a few of them were exclusive for this area. The rest were all ported straight from Leon’s main game.

And that’s it! Please, take a look at the entire video and at the comparison shots below. We’ll be waiting for your feedback as usual! 🙂
Happy Holidays to everyone!!

97 Responses to Separate Ways – Chapter 5 (Part 2 – END)

Thank you!
Now I’ll do the light/effect edits on all the Island part of the game.
When all these edits are finished… guess what! ;-P
Also, I’ll take the opportunity to do all Assignment Ada’s rooms at the same time.

Please feel free to put some baked shadows throughout the campaign man. You are doing a great job. I don’t really see too much to critique here really. Maybe the seat looks a little too used in the machine there compared to the original? IDK nothing really. What is next for this project?

Awesome!
Just made another donation. Smaller than last time but I will do better when the project is finished.
Great job guys… Don’t forget to take a break and spend the holiday with your families.
Marry Christmas!

Can’t say I have much to complain about with this one, lads. Outstanding work as usual.

Some of the simplest changes here make all the difference. You know I have a problem with mirrorred textures, so thank you for removing some of them, haha.

There are a couple of things that could probably do with a metal trim, but that’s sort of ‘extra’, as they certainly didn’t have any in the vanilla game. We were lucky we had graphics, so all this is gravy.

“There are a couple of things that could probably do with a metal trim, but that’s sort of ‘extra’, as they certainly didn’t have any in the vanilla game. We were lucky we had graphics, so all this is gravy.”

In picture O, I realise it’s stone, not metal, but where that structure on the left meets the floor, it looks unrealistic, which is a major problem with video games in general that we used to accept before HD graphics and now we’re getting into something of an uncanny valley, where so much looks so much more realistic that we want everything to look that good, and it’s just not feasible to do it all. I do admit that in many cases, the baked shadows can save it, or at least help a lot.

Other examples are the elevated metal structure in picture K, which seems to float next to the floor and cast no shadow/collect no grime where it meets, and so on and so forth; that disc that has the chair on it that Saddler had Ashley in, which disc appears to be occupying the same space as the floor, when in reality it’s mean to be on or through the floor, with shadows and more trims to facilitate and secure the mechanism that I would guess turns the chair (or why would they want the chair on that disc?), stuff like that.

Interesting to me, the yellow and black poles in Krauser’s area in picture B have this problem, but that rectangular structure that has the first aid spray is done pretty well, with the trim where it meets the ground. Looking closer, it’s not perfect, but if you don’t scrutinise it, that trim really sells it.

Sorry, I imagine this will look super long when it posts, but you asked, haha. So, don’t really worry about this stuff, honestly. It’s just something that gets to me a bit but which is honestly a tiny thing compared to everything else. If you do some baked shadows on this stuff, that’d be the most I would consider within the scope of the project. Everything beyond that would be a serious bonus and would require new models.

The “bad thing” of the screenshots is you have a lot of time to study the entire picture. That’s why we try to fix/improve only those that are really obvious while playing in a normal playthrough and/or easy to fix.
It would be too much to improve all of them because these kind of things are all over the entire game and you know… the neverending spiral of perfectinism must be stopped at some point XD

In “K”, there’s actually a baked shadow all over the floor so I’d just need to add some subtle circles under the structure legs by editing the new shadow texture.
This is how one of the new baked shadows texture looks like. The red spots are the points the legs meet the floor:http://www.re4hd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/0262.png

Fortunately, In “O” it’s in a shadowed area 😛

Thank you again!
We’ll probably ask for more feedback when the entire thing is released. That will be the time people make their own screenshots of specific issues and and send them to us and we’ll try to fix as many of them as possible.

Yeah, I’m not suggesting all this stuff get fixed, because it’s just too much. If the game were being made now, I’d be a bit more critical, but in 2005, we had much, much lower graphical standards and abilities, so it’s understandable that a lot of these trims (whether metal, wood, dirt, or simply shadow trims) aren’t present where objects meet.

I have complete faith in yourself and Cris, so I’m not worried about the final product whatsoever.

Interesting note about the screenshots, though. I thought about that as well. A lot of this I never noticed before because I was too busy playing the game. Probably be the same with your mod for the most part, although that uncanny valley quality I mentioned would make at least some things more obvious.

Hey Albert or Cris, I know that this is my second reply but it took me a long time to notice this and i never download the re4 UHD on steam but i found out that the pc version of RE4 UHD on the first day of release got most of the textures unfinished and they had to add patches to fix the game and control.

what do you think of the textures when it got release on the PC version without the mods?

The original HD textures are 95% just upscaled versions of the original versions the other 5% are re-creations but they are not faithfull to the original and some of them have really serious mapping issues because they redid them without taking into consideration the 3D model that texture was applied on :/ …

Wow, the original textures look horrible next to the remastered version, great job! The lighting effects look excellent, especially during the countdown at the construction site. The only thing that seemed off was the water effects, I mean It looks great but the physics are a little weird, like when you shot at it and it made a giant ripple (1:51 & 8:33). I like the way it looks at (9:35), the waves are smaller and are more artistic than realistic. That’s just a personal preference though and not very noticeable. Other than that the game looks gorgeous, the amount of work you guys put into this project shows and I can’t wait until you guys finish it. What are you guys going to work on next?

Hehe yep I know what you mean. But the water effect in this game has very limited options. I can’t make the waves and ripples to look smaller when the surface to cover is so big. Fortunately… who’s going to shot at the waves in these areas anyway? hehe What you see in 9:35 is exactly the same you see in 1:51 but at closer range. The difference is in 1:51 you also see the moving/ripple effect on top of those moving and transparent textures.
Believe me when I say I’ve tried during days to make those ripples smaller but it’s just not possible XD

Now I’m remastering lights and effects all over the Leon maingame Island areas 🙂

Seems most of the environments are almost done now since the castle release, many of the island textures can be simply transferred to Assignment Ada or Separate ways which means soon we will get to see new enemy textures? Looking forward to that part the most as the original enemy textures are so shit they’re almost offensive lol NEW regenerators, soldiers, villagers, monks & bosses etc !!

Hello!
I don’t think so. The baked shadows are just like all the other shadows in the game but using more detailed and re-created textures using 3D software to generate them: A black texture with an opacity channel mapped onto a 3D mesh that is floating at 1cm of floors, walls, etc…

Is there a way to add some anisotropic filtering into the game? I feel like the new textures could really benefit from it and it would be much nicer to see further at a higher quality. Other than that excellent work on the update!

So much detail!!! its like a whole new game!!!
The lights in picture M look like the could use some rust, maybe? though not a big deal
I dont remember those windmills =P were they easy to see in Leons campaign?
The rocket launcher is facing the other direction =P lol
Otherwise, its pretty damn amazing!

How come the progress summary shows the island so incomplete with parts pending, it seems like you guys have done a lot of work on the island already, but we havent seen many pictures?? 🙂

Thanks again!!
What you see in the original lights is not rust, is a gigantic pixel XD
The windmills are also in Leon’s area but no, they are not so easy to see.
About the rocket launcher… that’s a mistake, a consequence of replacing the lowpoly with the hipoly model

And finally, the “In Progress” tag in the Island part means Cris hasn’t revised those textures yet. And right now I’m doing all light/effects work of this part of the game. So, that column will soon shine in green 🙂

What you see in the original lights is not rust, is a gigantic pixel XD

I know but isnt it raining in that area? the new light fixtures and electrical box look almost shiny and even the walls look too clean now (I know its just the low quality, but the original wall looked more worn/dirty/cracked) its a minor detail that I probably wouldnt notice in actual gameplay, though when comparing the pics side by side its more noticable 🙂

Also, on the video, it can be seen that the handgun ammo next to the sniper one’s are also merging with the structure; and in the 1st area of the battle with Krauser the items are floating (shotgun shells, herbs, etc)

Hehe you are right I want to fix all these things all over the game but just those items that look reaaaaly bad. Otherwise I’d need to relocated 90% of the items of the entire game XD
I’d say most of them are floating or clipping a little (or a lot) So I’ll focus just on the most visually “offensive” cases

i don’t know how to say this because this is confusing, but here it goes. In Leon campaign, You finished the textures in the village and castle and some textures in the final level but in ada campaign, most of the textures that you fix somehow reverted back to it ugly textures or am i wrong the entire time

I’m not sure I’m understanding you. Could tou post some example/picture? Thanks!
Anyway, all textures in Ada’s campaign that appears in Leon’s campaign are exactly the same. What’s more, some of them have been even slightly improved while remastering Separate Ways. And the same can be said about the 3D models, lights, effects…

From what I understand, while the levels on Ada campaign are the same as Leon, the map file is different, with different informations for it to work, so they had to do the maps again (port what they had done on Leon’s map files and do new stuff).

been wondering is the Yellow-ish filter stop working after the mod is installed? It is very obvious the filter is gone in the Castle area coz the graphic looks lifeless, I don’t think the game is intended to look so grey though…

Totally get what he’s saying. The bloom effect from the flames and the yellow warm tone put over the screen. To me it always seemed these two had to be related to one another.

Albert and Cris had to hex edit it out because it was glitchy. I believe, in the Gamecube version everything but the flame bloom effect would be subtracted (cut off) from that tone.
Speaking of, The overal colors were also wrong. So they were edit to match the gc version.

If that’s what SvaTz was talking about… then yes! you explained it very well 🙂

That reddish tone (or yellow, or orange maybe… that’s why I didn’t understand it :-P) was a consequence of a bad ported effect.
That effect makes the flames in the original GC/Wii verison more intense (it gererates a blurry bloom effect around the flame).
It got broken during the HD porting process and it made some rooms to look more red and contrasted (with some additional overexposition issues). That fire bloom effect you can see in original GC/Wii versions disappeared and it simply became some kind of postprocess colour filter that affect the entire screen. But the colours you see in the Castle release are the original GC/Wii colours and that’s the way it was intended to look. We managed to bring back the original GC/Wii colours by simply deactivating that broken effect with a really simple hex edit trick as Alvare said.

But we included in the Castle release a pack of 4 additional gradient colour filters that replace the original 4 colour filters you can choose in the Options screen. The 4th one emulates that removed reddish tone. I inlcuded it because I’m aware (even it’s a wrong colour) some people like how the game looks with that additional reddish/yellowish colours.

included in the Castle release a pack of 4 additional gradient colour filters that replace the original 4 colour filters you can choose in the Options screen. The 4th one emulates that removed reddish tone.

The reason I asked this is because I really like the black and white gradient (its just a cool effect)

The UHD version includes a blueish/grey gradient (I think its gradient 4 by default) and I think your mod replaces gradient 4 with the reddish gradient so the blue/grey one is no longer available unless I replace it manually, but I actually prefer a real black/white gradient instead (which I have)

I think you should maybe also include an actual black and white gradient? like as gradient 2 or 3… heres a link to the gradient I use for black and white, and I think it has a really cool effect which is neat to turn on once in awhile (re5 has a similar one too) thanks!

If there is a way of adding more gradient options… that would be the solution… I never liked the original gradient options that’s why I included new colour filter options. I guess the best idea is to include our custom gradient files in the final pack but people will need to do the manual copy-paste-replace process just in case someone likes the original gradients.

“Also just out of curiosity, is there somewhere I can download your gradient along with the default ones?? I dont even know which gradients my game currently has and I dont want to reinstall it lol”

We included a backup folder in the castle release that includes the original gradient files. So, you already have them 🙂

“The UHD version includes a blueish/grey gradient (I think its gradient 4 by default)”

That blueish filter in UHD was included to revert the reddish tone this PC port have (but it doesn’t fix the overexposition issues, just the colour). Since we found out that reddish tone was caused by a broken effect and we are already removing it, that 4th option will be no longer necessary when the project is complete. What’s more… not all the rooms suffer of that reddish tone and this means some rooms that had the right colours become blueish for no reason… All RE4 ports are quite a mess XD

We’ll explain the process in a more comprehensive way in future releases, thats for sure 😉

That blueish filter in UHD was included to revert the reddish tone this PC port have

O i didnt look at it like that, I mean theres 3 other gradients, I thought the blue/grey was supposed to be like black/white (which is in re5) but yeah you should include a black/white gradient like the one I linked above cuz we dont really need 4 different gradients if they are all the same

Oops! I think I’m mixing up things XD There was a gradient in one of the latest official pacthes that corrected the reddish tone. I wasn’t talking about the grey/blueish filter you mention.

I guess the best idea is to include a good guide explaining how every gradient file looks like, the official and our custom ones, and let people to manually choose the gradients they want. It’s really simple to replace the files and you even can do it while playing. There’s no need to restart the game 🙂

I guess the best idea is to include a good guide explaining how every gradient file looks like, the official and our custom ones, and let people to manually choose the gradients they want

Yes exactly 🙂

most people wont know the difference between your new gradients because you didnt add any info about it. I dont think anybody will use the default ones because yours are so much better, but its always good to have more options 🙂

Really good work! 🙂
I just wish someone could do the same for Resident Evil Remake. The remaster is not awful but you can see the shortcomings like cropping the image to be widescreen, adding filters and increasing the saturation to hide how pixelated the pre-rendered backgrounds are, adding fog in areas for no reason and so on.

Hey Al, idk if you’ve already played with them already, but i noticed some issues with the minecart area in the castle. Specifically, there’s a pretty bad noise filter on the screen in that area(most noticeable on Leon’s arms), and the bear traps are placed too low, with the middle being hidden by the ground.

Hello! I’ve always thought the hidden trap thing was on purpose. They are semi-buried on the sand so they are harder to see. I’ve always seen that as a nice trick hehe
About the noise… I’m checking it right now and all the weapon sounds are ok here in my computer … hummm… so I’m afraid I don’t know what to say… Could you record a video or something so I can hear the bad sounds? just curiosity…
Thanks!

Ahh haha my mistake 😛
Yep, some areas in the game have a really huge grain effect that looked OK in original SD resolutions but blurry in HD resolutions. Fortunatelly, it’s really easy to calibrate the grain size room by room and that’s one of the pending things in my list 🙂

I don’t think it’s dust. I’d say it’s just a visual trick to create different “vibes” from room to room.

The “Remove Film Grain” mod has side effects because the same grain texture is used in other effects. We won’t remove the grain, we’ll just make it thinner. But there is an easy way of deactivating it room by room.
Open every stx\ udas file and search for “01 04 72 00” hex string and replace it to “00 00 00 00”. This will deactivate the screnn noise effect

We are also adjusting the specular textures AKA “shader fix”. So, no, the shader fix won’t be necessary 🙂

On the note of sounds though, there’s a fair share of badly compressed sounds in Separate Ways, particularly when Leon is around. (This is probably left over from Separate Ways’ ps2 form) Would it be any trouble to replace it with the Gamecube audio from the main story?

Yep, I hope it’s easy to replace because I want to update Leon and Krauser voices you can hear here and there while playing as Ada. I’ve already managed to replace a few room sounds here and there so I guess this will be the same process!
That Krauser’s “C’mon” line during his battle against Ada sounds so bad… :///

Apologies if i’m rambling here, but I noticed the good ol separate ways cgi is still compressed as ever, too. Wonder if we’re able to replace/rerecord the parts that are borrowed from Leon wholesale, i.e. the initial chainsaw scene. (Which is lovely and in realtime for Leon, buuuut a 480i video for Ada lol)

Unfortunatelly there’s no way of replacing low-res videos with higher resolution videos right now. Even if we could re-render the entire Ada’s cutscenes (which it’s impossible) this port sticks to the original 512×336 pixels resolution videos.

We’ve tried replacing a video with a higher resolution one and you only see the 512×336 central pixels … the rest of the picture gets cutout off of the screen…

Dang, I thought Capcom blew up the videos to a larger resolution but didn’t update them. Well that sucks, wish we had a workaround. I was mostly talking about stuff that was flat out ripped from Leon’s story btw.

Yep, you can clearly see that in the ending credits video and how the text looks. It’s not even upscaled. They are the exact same files included in the Wii Edition disc, byte by byte. (at least they didn’t re-reencoded the videos… but they are full of compression artifacts anyway)
Not even the shared cutscenes can be improved … 🙁

Any chance of bringing Mafia Leon/Knight Ashley into cutscenes? I just realized that Mafia Leon actually has a cutscene model! Although its only ever really used for radio chats w Hunnigan/Salazar and Saddler.

Yes, it’s possible. In fact someone already did it and posted it in the RE Modding Boards. But the scarf animations are quite buggy and some other side effects (mostly clipping model issues). In brief: It looks bad…

Could you add some extra custom for Leon and Ada after you finished your job on this game?

Imagine we have an customise system like Lightning returns FF:XIII ! This is the exactly what Capcom never do it for us and we use additional handmade mods for change the appearance of characters that usually have some bugs in games.

And let me to say that your job on this part of process is great and I really like it : )

Unfortunatelly we can’t add any extra. We can just edit what’s already in the game. It would be a replacement, not an addition. We’ll leave that for the modding community in http://residentevilmodding.boards.net 🙂
Thank you!!